This week is National Nurses Week and studies report South Carolina will face a major shortage of nurses by 2030.
In 2016, there were about 40,000 registered nurses in the state, but the Office for South Carolina Healthcare Workforce reports, that number will not meet the needs of the State by 2030.
Wanda Dooley is the director of nursing at Coastal Carolina University and tells News13, salary is not the largest obstacle the State faces when keeping nurses here, it’s education.
“The educational system is set up in a way that we can’t really take more students,” Dooley said. “The majority of nurses in the state are still associate degree nurses, so that’s the technical colleges and they don’t have the faculty and they don’t have the man power to take more nurses.”
Dooley says it’s a challenge for schools in the area to teach a large number of nursing students because there are not large enough hospitals here to provide student nurses with a safe experience, meaning smaller class sizes and more instructors.
Despite the issue, she says the program at CCU can handle more students because of the way it is structured.
“A program like mine that is R.N. to B.S.N., we’re pretty open, we will take as many associate degree nurses that want to come on and earn their bachelors degree and that gets them a little further in the profession,” Dooley said.
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